DR. MARK WEINER: How long must patients wait for medical marijuana?

I’m a physician and am board certified in the specialties of neurology and sleep disorder medicine. I’m a husband, a father, a grandfather – and now I’m a patient.

I was cruising along running a private practice, as well as serving as medical director of a sleep lab in central Massachusetts, until it all came to a crashing end two years ago. I was diagnosed with cancer, aggressive malignant brain cancer.

I shouldn’t be here today. With my diagnosis of glioblastoma multiforme the odds given to the last-place Boston Red Sox in spring training 2013 to win the World Series were far, far better than the odds of my watching the rolling rally victory parade this past fall.

People call my story compelling. Inspiring. I just call it survival. But I didn’t reach this point without suffering.

In my practice, I treated disease. But I also focused much of my treatment on the symptoms of disease: pain, insomnia, hypersomnia, fatigue. Treatment options were frequently limited to medication that had significant side effects– or worse, were addictive.

Now, I’m the patient. I wouldn’t be here but for the care I received from my treating doctors and their teams at Dana-Farber; my wife, my wonderful family and friends. But I did not reach this point without suffering.

During a year-long course of chemotherapy, the nausea was terrible. I lost about 20 percent of my body weight over just a few weeks. I was so weak that I couldn’t lift a soup spoon. My wife cradled me in her arms like a baby to try to spoon feed me.

Bad got worse. Not eating or drinking led to dehydration. More weakness. Constipation. A trip to the ER I would not wish on my worst enemy. My doctors tried different concoctions of medicine. Nothing touched me except for the side effects. They made things worse.

If only there were something I could take that might work. Not a medicine to cure me. Just something to let me eat again. Let me feel just a little bit human again. Well, there is: medical marijuana.

But that was not something I could consider.

What was I supposed to do? Send my wife out at midnight to meet a criminal in a dark back alley? Making it out alive would be the least of her problems. Then she would have to somehow make it home without being arrested.

Not gonna happen. I’d suffer. And did I suffer. Boy, I did.

The reality is that patients continue to go without any form of safe access.

The law does allow patients to cultivate their own medicine. But for patients undergoing chemotherapy or struggling with other debilitating conditions, home cultivation is not a realistic option. Suffering severe fatigue, I can barely get off the couch, let alone start a new hobby as a vigorous gardener. I’m allowed to appoint someone to cultivate for me, but who? Even if I found someone, I would have to wait three or four months for the medicine to grow. And that’s assuming I could find a friend willing to risk arrest for growing at home, even with a doctor’s certification (yup, it happened).

Page 2 of 2 - As I understand it, the medical marijuana law set the timeline for medical marijuana dispensaries to open by this summer, but the 20 provisional licenses are currently being re-reviewed. Certainly applications should be double-checked for accuracy, but the process shouldn’t drag on indefinitely. In fact, dispensary registrations are probationary and can be revoked at any time if operators fail to meet patient or community needs. So there is little risk in going forward.

The playing field is not level. Sick people cannot politic, cannot lobby. We are too sick. That’s why I participated in a rally at the State House last month, along with dozens of other patients suffering with conditions like Lou Gehrig’s disease, multiple sclerosis, ulcerative colitis, severe pain and seizure disorders.

Together we asked Gov. Deval Patrick to move forward with registering dispensaries without delay. Please allow us patients, us victims, the opportunity to live more comfortable lives, maybe even more productive lives. Or, at least, allow us to try to suffer less.